Butler Library host talk on Butler Jewish immigrant
On June 30, 1956, Joseph Hurwitz and his wife, Bessie, celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary at the Elks Club in Butler. During the celebration, Joseph presented a special gift to his three children.
His memoir.
“The Autobiography of a Jewish Immigrant” is a 28-page autobiography detailing Joseph’s path and observation of his journey from what is now known as Lithuania to Butler County. He wrote it in English and Hebrew.
Hurwitz’s granddaughter, Roberta Gallagher, of Butler, still has the family copy of the book.
“I think we’re very lucky that he actually sat down and put pen to paper,” Gallagher said. “What a gift to give to his three children and for now us, the children of the children, to get — it’s just amazing.”
Hurwitz’s recorded journey was the topic at the Butler Public Library’s “Stories of Exile” series on Thursday, March 14. Led by Eric Lidji, director of the Rauh Jewish History Program and Archives at the Heinz History Center in Pittsburgh, residents were given an intimate look at the late Butler resident’s life.
Bessie and Joseph had been among millions of Jews seeking new opportunities or escaping antisemitic violence and oppressive regulations in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
“One of the things I love the most about working at the archive is you take something that seems very common, and, through archive research, your understating deepens immeasurably,” Lidji said. “And I think this story is a perfect example of this.”
With the aid of photos, Lidji provided historical and cultural context to several excerpts during the nearly hourlong lecture.
Joseph Hurwitz was born in 1886 in the town of Vievis, in present-day Lithuania. The youngest of four children, Joseph Gureyovich moved with his family to the city of Uman, in today’s central Ukraine. But after his father died, the family members dispersed.
“I was 9 years old then and from that time on I was on my own in this wide world of ours,” he wrote many years later. Joseph went to a boys trade school, graduating as a machinist at age 12.
By 16, Joseph was stepping off the boat at Ellis Island. Now Joseph Hurwitz, thanks to immigration officials, he worked in a variety of jobs — in cigar and garment factories, as a streetcar conductor, as a postal worker — and took English lessons at night. Living frugally with relatives and friends, he saved enough money for one big purchase: a steamer ticket for his sweetheart, Bessie Miller, whom he had met in Russia at age 12.
Eager for new opportunities and fresh air, the couple left their third-floor Brooklyn tenement in 1917 and moved to Butler, where Joseph joined a brother in business and later started his own, the Joseph Hurwitz Co., a scrap metal yard serving industries throughout the region.
Lifelong Butler resident Lynn Andres said she found the lecture fascinating.
“I’ve reached the point in my life where we want to know where we came from,” Andres said.
Also in attendance was Gallagher, who was also able to provide insight to her grandfather’s life and field questions from the audience.
Gallagher said she thinks there are important lessons to learn from her grandfather’s story.
“I think we have to remember whose shoulders we stand on,” Gallagher said. “I think it’s so important to not forget those people.”
“The Autobiography of a Jewish Immigrant” is available online at https://tinyurl.com/24uc8mcx
